Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Day 17 - Skidaway Island St. Pk. to Myrtle Beach State Park, SC

So....it was supposed to be a short, easy drive to Myrtle Beach. Yeah, right. It started out when Dylan decided he wanted a Mocha Frappe thingy from McD's. We asked the "Nav Chick" where a McD's was and she decided to take us this complete round-about way to get there. Of course, there was a long line in the drive thru and it took forever. When we got to the window, we were informed that we were going to have to wait because the "milk machine" was broken. Huh? I complained that we'd waited so long already that they should have fixed the milk machine while we were waiting. We pull forward to wait for our order. 1 Mocha Frappe. The stupid bitch comes out with a mocha coffee!!! We sent her back in for the Frappe...like we ordered...and she comes back a few minutes later with the drink.....sans straw!!! Back in she goes to get the straw. Shit!! I should have known there were going to be problems when the person taking our order had blue hair, green fingernails and no teeth. Way to go, McD's!!!!

Well, we had to get gas too so we asked the "Nav Chick" where a Chevron station was. Once again, she took us on the shortest route which included a tour of some of the more aesthetically pleasing parts of Savannah. 45 minutes later, we were finally on the road!! Ugh!

The drive took us up Hwy 17 along the coast thru a bunch of smaller towns. I have never seen so many churches in my entire life. Literally, there is a church about every 5 miles or so. A lot of these churches have little cemeteries right next to them filled with constituents. We had to stop at a super gargantuan Walmart along the way so that we could fill up on supplies and return a tent fan that we had purchased a few days ago that didn't work out of the box. We spent forever walking thru the 5 football field sized shrine to American consumerism. A few comments about Walmart. They are dirt cheap, the California produce is better quality and far cheaper than you can get in California, each Walmart carries a slightly different selection of goods geared towards the clientele and EVERYONE shops at Walmart. There is no stigma attached to Walmart here in the East like there is in L.A.

Myrtle Beach State Park was packed!! There were only 3 spots to choose from and they were $35 a night!!! There are 336 spots in an area about the size of that Walmart I just mentioned. ;-) We set up and made a beeline towards the beach. The beach was really nice...not as nice as Panama City, but a very nice beach nonetheless. Dylan did some serious skim boarding as we walked about 2 or 3 miles down the beach. What a trip to be at the beach at sundown, look out to sea and have the sun at your back. Weird.

These 2 teenaged girls started up a conversation with us as we were on the pier watching the sunset. Come to find out, they were camping in the park and lived only about 20 minutes away. Finally, someone actually took the time to stop and talk to us!! We have been very outgoing and gregarious this whole trip trying to talk to people and very few have responded in kind. These girls, Chelsey and Cory, were the first. We rode bikes back to camp and guess who came looking for us (Dylan)? They joined us for popcorn, gatorade and watermelon while we sat in Citronella candlelight at the picnic table. Nice. I went to bed around 11PM and Dylan decided to go hang with these girls and their family at their campsite. I guess he had a good time cuz he didn't get back until about 1AM!! He finally met some kids his age! YAY!!!